Neo-Nazis recently committed vandalism in Brooklyn and Portland, which some Jews will say proves the need to make aliya. Yet other anti-Semites desecrate Judaism’s holiest site in broad daylight.
To mark Ramadan, Muslims unfurled a neo-Nazi banner on the Temple Mount portraying ousted Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi beside the flags of Hamas and Egypt. If the description neo-Nazi sounds excessive, consider the following statements from Morsi in 2010 and the Hamas Covenant:
“We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.”
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious…It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realized.”
Likewise, thousands in Kafr Kanna demonstrated this month in support of Morsi. Arabs near Hevron raised the swastika outright in May.
Other obscene sights on the Temple Mount prompted a report this month to ask if it has become a theme park. If one believes the condition of the Temple Mount with its unique holiness sets the tone for the nation, then a Nazi flag near Hevron and other monstrous events begin to make sense.
In just the past few months, a Jew has been beaten in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, mourners attacked on the Mount of Olives, the Cave of Patriarchs vandalized, a synagogue in Haifa spray painted, rockets launched on Yom HaShoah—and why should anyone be surprised? Why should Jews expect peace and normalcy when our holiest site is brazenly desecrated and Jews arrested for praying there?
Tisha B’Av nears, and Megillat Eicha will be read once again. With reference to this, in 1986 Rabbi Meir Kahane Hy”d wrote an article for The Jewish Press about the Temple Mount titled “Lamentations 5:17-18.” After noting the widespread outrage the Muslim world would display if Jews tried to build a synagogue in Mecca, Rabbi Kahane observed concerning the absence of Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount and religious repression there:
“Alas, when one comes to the Jewish people—the product of 2,000 years of an abnormality called the Exile—there is no self-respect, there is no sense of indignation for the attack on religion and the sanctity of Israel. For there can be no self-respect and no religious or national pride in a slave people, a people who, though physically leaving the Exile, retain all of its sick attributes in the marrow of their bones.”
There are some Israelis—more often overcompensating olim than sabras it seems—who enjoying indicting and berating Jews outside Israel for not making aliya. Yet what is the ongoing desecration of the Temple Mount if not an indictment of Jews inside Israel? Elderly women suffer harassment by Arabs in cities like Jerusalem and Lod, and this is not an indictment? Instead of divisive and evasive nastiness, maybe more national introspection and self-growth are in order.